Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine wants me to join him in condemning
both the United States for its threat of war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein
for his "morally outrageous behavior and genocidal policies." Lerner is
part of the semi-chauvinistic American left - a group of progressives and
liberals that condemns Washington's enemies unreservedly while at the same
time condemning their own country for failing to live up to its rhetoric
about being liberal and democratic in its foreign policy.

Why Lerner has chosen this occasion to make public his condemnation
of Saddam Hussein's "morally outrageous behavior" is worth examining. He
could have done so two years ago, five years ago, ten years, even fifteen
years ago, for Saddam Hussein's behavior was no less - and indeed, far
more - worthy of condemnation in the past than it is today. But as far
as I know, Lerner wasn't organizing petitions and inviting others to join
him in condemning the Iraqi leader (not in any obvious way) until Washington
decided that drawing attention to Hussein's behavior might be a good way
to justify a stepped up war on Iraq to seize control of the country and
its vast oil wealth.

If your tastes, as Lerner's seem to, lean toward condemning crimes,
injustices, and morally outrageous behavior, there's no paucity of outrages
to choose from. Every army, every police force, every government, every
organization is maculated to some degree by corruption, by criminal activity,
by base motives, and by morally outrageous behavior. Accordingly, we can't
expect Lerner, or anyone else for the matter, to condemn all instances
of morally outrageous behavior everywhere, for morally outrageous behavior
is so ubiquitous that the crusader against moral lapses would be unremittingly
engaged, his time completely taken up in fashioning denunciations.

But of all the morally outrageous acts from which he could chose, Lerner
has chosen to zero in on Saddam Hussein's, and he's done so on the eve
of Washington escalating its war on Iraq. Why Hussein? And why now? It's
as if Germany's liberals and progressives decided on the eve of Hitler's
invasion of France that the French needed to be thoroughly castigated.
"Hey, we don't like what the Nazis are doing, but then we don't think too
highly of the French either." A German left that unreservedly condemned
the Nazi's prospective victims would, with justification, be viewed with
suspicion.

And so too should Lerner, for there is no connection between Saddam
Hussein's behavior and Washington's decision to escalate its war on Iraq
that would justify Lerner's broaching of the Iraqi leader's behavior in
connection with a purported antiwar declaration. It should have been enough
for Lerner to say he condemned the actions of his own government.

Whether the United States has the right to take control of another country
by force (or otherwise), whether countries have the right to arm themselves
against aggression (including that initiated by the United States or the
UN Security Council), and whether the UN Security Council has the right
to outrage the sovereignty of weaker countries, are entirely separate issues
from the behavior of Saddam Hussein. The only relevance the Iraqi leader
has to these questions is entirely incidental - it is part of the pretext
for an invasion, and an essential element of Washington's war propaganda,
and so, in these incidental ways, Hussein's behavior is germane, but only
then. Lerner's inclusion of the issue in what is purported to be a plea
against the war treats as legitimate an illegitimate aspect of Washington's
case for aggression. It says, Saddam Hussein's behavior is indeed relevant
(for if not, why mention it?) and so strengthens Washington's hand.

But, it is said in defense of the practice, that people can keep the
two issues separate (and therefore there's no danger in presenting the
two together) but that vastly underestimates the power of propaganda, and
turns a blind eye to the efficacy of demonizing leaders to engineer consent
for war against their countries, richly evident in the campaign of Washington-directed
aggression against Yugoslavia. Many people who had reservations about NATO's
prolonged bombing of Yugoslavia could assuage whatever discomfort they
had by pointing out that, whether NATO had ulterior motives or not, the
effects of the war were just, because a "monster" was ousted from power,
and Serbs and ethnic Albanians were better off as a consequence. The same
argument, adapted to Iraqis and the Kurds, is being used today.

What's more, the claim that the public won't see a connection between
the issue of Hussein's behavior and Washington's casus belli is disingenuous,
for the broaching of Hussein's behavior almost certainly originates in
an attempt to ensure the public doesn't see those who oppose Washington's
foreign policy as supporting Washington's demonized enemies; in other words,
it's a widespread tendency to conflate unconnected issues that has inspired
the ritualistic denunciation of Hussein. "If we condemn the Iraqi leader,"
the reasoning goes, "we can't be accused, simply because we oppose Washington's
plans, of supporting him." Unfortunately, that ritual, punctiliously observed
by the semi-chauvinistic American left, reinforces the idea that Hussein
is the enemy, making Washington's case for war all the more compelling.
This kind of behavior could be condemned for being entirely selfish, motivated
not by humanitarian concern for the targets of Washington's imperialist
aggressions, but for fear one's reputation will be sullied by being seen
to support leaders with which much of the public is, owing to Washington's
propaganda, likely to have little sympathy.

Of course, Lerner isn't alone. He's just one of many, including Z Magazine's
Michael Albert and The Progressive's Matthew Rothschild, to join the Campaign
for Peace and Democracy (CPD) in its high-profile condemnation of Iraq's
leader. The CPD's director (one of a number) is Joanne Landy, hardly as
prominent as Albert or Rothschild, but a paragon of the semi-chauvinist
American left all the same. Landy, on the editorial board of the journal
New Politics, has a history of being even more zealous in her criticism
of Washington's enemies than Washington is itself. A fervent anti-Communist,
Landy was a supporter of the Polish trade union Solidarity. She petitioned
the Clinton government to lift its arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslims,
curious behavior for one leading a campaign for peace. She also, it seems,
is a member of the archconservative Council on Foreign Relations, which
publishes the foreign policy establishment journal Foreign Affairs. The
Council on Foreign Affairs' commitment to either peace or democracy is
tempered by how well either condition serves the interests of Washington,
and therefore, the commercial interests of Western firms.

These days, apart from demanding the ritualistic flaying of Washington's
enemies, the semi-chauvinistic American left is crowing about the growing
movements against the war, but tellingly, the biggest antiwar movements
have developed outside the United States, and the largest of those within
the United States have been organized by what is sneeringly referred to
as the "old" left or the "authoritarian" left, whose members are derided
"not for what they say, but for what they don't say," what they don't say
being the irrelevant denunciation of Washington's victims. Not joining
in the "Two Minutes Hate" is said to reveal the "old" left as supporters
of "thugs," "tyrants" and "monsters," which it doesn't, but this calumny
is emblematic of the moderate left's long standing practice of smearing
anyone or anything to the left of itself.

Soon enough, Lerner, Albert and Landy will be issuing denunciations
of North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-Il, for North Korea, long in Washington's
sights, is likely to be the next target of Washington's war of world conquest.
This is presaged, as much as the imminent all-out war on Iraq was presaged
almost a year ago, by a growing number of black propaganda articles appearing
in newspapers, the most recent centered around North Korea's decision to
bring a nuclear power plant, capable of producing bomb grade material,
back on line - this after Washington dragged its heels on a deal to provide
fuel oil and build plants that don't produce bomb grade material.

If you believed what the media told you (and I suspect what Landy, Lerner
and Albert would tell you), North Korea must not be permitted to develop
nuclear weapons, even though the United States and its allies have large
nuclear arsenals themselves, whose threatened use Washington employs to
force compliance with its demands. Rogue countries, it is said, are irresponsible
and cannot be trusted for they may use the weapons to threaten other countries
or to arm terrorists or both.

Washington, according to this received view, represents an "international
community" that seeks to disarm or limit rogue states that "defy the world."
It is, of course, in the interest of great powers to establish a monopoly
on the world's most destructive weapons; armipotent countries get want
they want by force or threat of force; weak countries, if they're to survive,
capitulate. And North Korea, long threatened by the United States, and
unwilling to capitulate, has a good reason to want to arm itself. Whether
it is able to survive remains to be seen, but if it does, it will owe no
thanks to the semi-chauvinistic American left, whose members, no doubt,
wish for the regime's demise, even if it means it would be replaced (as
it almost certainly would) by an American-subservient government that would
turn over control of the country to US corporations, the IMF, and the World
Bank.

That Washington's designs on North Korea are rapidly coming to fruition
is largely disguised in the media, where a strong chauvinism pervades discussion
of foreign affairs, one that holds that if one's own country seeks a monopoly
on weapons of mass destruction, all is well and as it should be, for one's
own country is the best, the most moral, the most highly guided by legitimate,
and selfless, motives; other countries, especially those one's own government
designates as "states of concern" are cunning, duplicitous, and guided
by the most reprehensible of motives. These countries are also said to
be led by "monsters," "thugs," and "dictators," who are (to use Noam Chomsky's
words) "as evil as they come," and whose ouster would benefit the world.

Countries that are said to be "defying the world" are countries that
insist on exercising their sovereignty, to decide how to arrange their
economy, and how to defend themselves. But sovereignty, in recent times,
has been dismissed as old-fashioned, a legal invention that allows "monsters"
and "dictators" to outrage the human rights of their own people; it cannot,
therefore, be allowed to stand, except, like so much else about the politics
of Washington and its allies, where it suits the interests of Western governments
and the business interests they represent; and indeed, since other countries'
sovereignty often stands in the way of these interests, it is routinely
outraged.

What's more, the case is made, and presented by the media of great powers
as if it were an axiom, that allowing "rogue" countries to develop weapons
of mass destruction is tantamount to presenting both one's neck and a knife
to an evil and insane assailant animated by a desire to murder. Accordingly,
much of the language surrounding discussion of these regimes, whether in
the media, or among the left, calls forth this metaphor. North Korea, for
example, is said to be a "desperate and brutal regime [that] continues
to produce a terrifying society of cult-like fanaticism and mind control."
And words such as "bizarre" and "reclusive" are regularly pressed into
service to describe the regime.

Moreover, it is necessary, as Arthur Ponsonby once pointed out in his
study of the propaganda used by the British in WWI, "to detach an individual
on whom may be concentrated all the vials of wrath of an innocent people,"
on whom "every crime in the calendar [can be] laid at his door," and who
can be set up as the "incarnation of all iniquity." Ponsonby was referring
to Kaiser Wilhelm, "the villain of the piece" according to the allies,
but there have been many Wilhelm's since: in recent times Slobodan Milosevic,
today, Saddam Hussein, and increasingly, Kim Jong-Il.

These exercises in black propaganda begin with imperialist governments,
and almost always Washington, establishing the case that the country in
question must be invaded or blockaded or destabilized, and ultimately subjected
to a course of regime change, all for the good of the country's people,
the country's neighbors, and world peace, these points wholeheartedly seconded
by an unquestioning media, and eventually, backed up by the Michael Alberts,
Michael Lerners and Noam Chomskys of the semi-chauvinistic American left.

North Korea is routinely described by the media as reclusive, even autarkic,
designations that make about as much sense a branding a person locked away
in a prison cell a recluse who shuns contact with the outside world. North
Korea, as other countries that insist on exercising their sovereignty over
Washington's objections, is embargoed and menaced by American forces poised
on its borders and has been menaced from the moment in 1945 that Washington
decided to occupy the south of the Korean peninsula, and would have occupied
the entire peninsula if it could have. The reclusiveness is hardly self-imposed.

What's more, the loss of trade with the Soviet bloc, a series of natural
disasters and droughts, the channeling of scarce resources away from consumer
needs into defense against a minatory United States, have reduced the country--whose
every day of existence has been threatened by the implacable hostility
of the United States--to desperate poverty and the organization of the
country around a guerilla model. It is as easy to scorn North Korea for
its militarism and secrecy and poverty as it is to scorn a child who has
been starved and repeatedly threatened with violence by a hulking bully
for his sullenness, his suspiciousness and his truculence. Those who are
not pusillanimous, however, will not stoop so low.

That, however, cannot be said of the semi-chauvinist American left,
whose leaders will demand obeisance to the war propaganda of Washington,
and will carry on at great length about Stalinism, and dictatorship, and
police states, and Michael Lerner, who says nothing about Kim Jong-Il today,
will, on the eve of the destruction of North Korea by his own government,
ask you to join him in condemning the United States for its aggression,
and Kim too for his "morally outrageous behavior and genocidal policies."
The beneficiary, as always, will be Washington and the investor class it
represents; the losers, the investor class's victims, and anyone who hopes
for something more humane, more rational, and more congenial, than the
primacy of US capitalism.

...

You may re-post this article, providing the text remains unchanged.

Join our e-mail list. Send an e-mail to sr.gowans@sympatico.ca and write
"subscribe" in the subject line.